The primary (and best) reason to digitize museum collections is to share them with the public on the web. PMM’s photo archives staff has been hard at work for the past year getting to know Kosti Ruohomaa’s photographs through this process. Since he worked under the umbrella of a photo agency for most of his life (Black Star Publishing in Manhattan), the collection is most meaningfully grouped by his professional assignments: those he was given and those he conceived himself and pitched to them. It’s interesting to observe that many of the “self-assignments” were studies of particular aesthetic and cultural themes which the photographer circled back to repeatedly throughout his career.
Beginning in January of 2021, we’ll use this page to showcase a few new assignments each month. Please check back here to further explore the captivating work of this iconic Maine talent. Click on any of the thumbnails below to open that group of images in our online database.
Kosti Assignments
Farm County Agent
In the late 1950s, Gilbert Jaeger was the county farm agent for Knox and Lincoln counties in Maine (farm agents were […] Read More »
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L.L. Bean
Leon Leonwood Bean was an earthy, dynamic character whose runaway entrepreneurial success was merely an extension of his life and personality. […] Read More »
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Painting Bee
“On Monday, August 25th [1952], the city of Eastport, Maine closed its shops and painted the town red— and green, yellow […] Read More »
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Washington, Maine Town Meeting
The tiny working-class town of Washington, Maine lies in northern Knox County. It was incorporated as Putnam in 1811; residents adopted […] Read More »
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Potato Harvest
In the late 1950s when the photographer visited Aroostook County in northeastern Maine, its potato production was still the strongest in […] Read More »
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Rehabilitation Farm
Malcolm Stannard grew up on a Connecticut farm, but left his agrarian roots as a young man to pursue a maritime […] Read More »
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School Teacher
Doris MacDougal began her career in education at the start of the Depression. The choice was practical, since school teachers at […] Read More »
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Maine Guide at Rangeley
Ed DeMar was the quintessential Maine Guide. When Ruohomaa photographed him and some of his colleagues in 1958, DeMar was a […] Read More »
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Log Drive 1954
In the early days of interior commercial logging, passage by river was the sole means of moving timber from stump to […] Read More »
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